Bring some water, if
possible."

"Yes, yes, water. . . . Only a knock on the head. . . . How did it
happen? And what is that noise of firing?"

Hozier's scattered wits were returning, though neither he nor Iris
remembered that the _Andromeda_ was waterless. He looked up at her,
then at the men, and he smiled as his eyes met hers again.

"Funny thing!" he said, with a natural tone that was reassuring. "I
thought the windlass smashed itself into smithereens. But it couldn't.
What was it that banged?"

"A shell, fired from the island," said the girl.

Hozier straightened himself a little. He was hearing marvels, though
far from understanding them, as yet.

"A shell!" he repeated vacantly. Had she said "a comet" it could not
have sounded more incredible.

"Yes. It might have killed you. Several of the men are dead. I
myself saw three of them killed outright, and two others are badly
wounded."

"Here you are, sir--drink this," said a fireman, offering a pannikin of
beer. It was unpalatable stuff, but it tasted like the nectar of the
gods to one who had sustained a blow that would have felled an ox.
Hozier had almost emptied the tin when an exclamation from an Irish
stoker drew all eyes to the after part of the ship.

"Holy war! Will ye look at that!" shouted the man. "Sure the skipper
isn't dead, at all, at all."

Iris had failed to grasp the meaning of Coke's antics in the
chart-room, but they were now fully explained. The bulldog breed of
this self-confessed rascal had taken the upper hand of him. Though he
had not scrupled to plot the destruction of the ship, and thus rob a
marine insurance company of a considerable sum of money--though at that
very instant there was actual proof of his scheme in the preparations
he had made to jam the steering-gear when the anchor was raised after
the tanks were replenished--it was not in the man's nature to skulk
into comparative safety because a foreigner, a pirate, a
not-to-be-mentioned-in-polite-society Portygee, opened fire on him in
this murderous fashion. Moreover, Coke's villainy would have
sacrificed no lives. The _Andromeda_ might be converted into scrap
iron, and thereby give back, by perverted arithmetic, the money
invested in her. But her white decks would not be stained with blood.
Whatever risk was incurred would be his, the responsible captain's, his
only. It was a vastly different thing that shot and shell should be
rained on an unarme